OS:TFS Skill System
Disclaimer The following materials based on FUDGE, entitled the Otherspace Skills System, were originally created by Andy Laugel and made available by Andy Laugel, rewritten by Sean Sabbage (Ifrit) and Jenna Clark (Dice) in 2008, and are not authorized or endorsed in any way by Steffan O'Sullivan or any publisher of other FUDGE materials. Neither Steffan O'Sullivan or any publisher of other FUDGE material is in any way responsible for the content of these materials. Original FUDGE materials © Copyright 1992-1995 Steffan O'Sullivan, All Rights Reserved. Traits Characters in the Otherspace Skills System are largely defined by three coded types of traits; attributes, skills, and GFQs (gifts/faults/quirks). These three factors, acting in conjunction, set many of the aspects of your character and what he/she/it can do. Attributes and skills are described by eight main levels in decreasing order of excellence: Legendary (8), Superb (7), Great(6), Good(5), Fair(4), Mediocre(3), Poor(2), and Terrible(1). Due to the inherent variability in the dice, rolls above Legendary or below Terrible may be seen at times- these are represented as Legendary+1 or Terrible-1, and etc. For skills, a Fair can be considered about the rank of a beginning professional in a field, and Good the mark of someone able to comfortably make a living. Great is someone with a marked talent and special training, Superb represents both innate talent and years of dedicated practice, and someone with a Legendary in a skill might be known across planets for their talent in that area. PCs are supposed to be exceptional, but please try and keep your skills in line with your characters' backstory and accomplishments. Attributes Attributes represent your character's basic competency in eight different domains; largely mental domains (Intelligence, Willpower, Charisma and Perception) and largely physical domains (Strength, Constitution, Dexterity and Reaction). Intelligence: Basic raw thinking ability/speed of mental processing and learning. Intelligence helps with scientific skills, computer-based skills, and many engineering skills. Willpower: Strength of mind over body. Willpower helps with psionic skills, psionic resistance and pain resistance. It may also be rolled versus skills such as Seduction. Charisma: Innate ability to command respect/affection from others. Charisma helps with social skills of any sort, from singing to lying. Perception: Attention to detail, both in terms of physically sharp senses and mentally sharp insight. Perception helps with medical skills and other skills that relate to, well, perception! Firing guns fires under this attribute. Strength: Sheer physical muscular prowess. Strength plays a role in determining the damage you do in the combat system, and also helps with strength-based fighting skills such as Heavy Weapons and Brutal Unarmed Combat. Constitution: Physical toughness, both in terms of resisting disease and in healing from injury. Constitution helps you heal better, plays a roll in determining the damage you take in the combat system, and helps with endurance-related skills such as outdoor survival. Dexterity: Physical coordination and grace, both full-body and with one's hands. Dexterity helps with many melee combat skills, musical instruments and several other skills that require talented hands. Reaction: Speed of one's reflexes and movement. Reaction determines who acts first in combat. It also helps with piloting, evading bullets and emergency medical care. These central attributes are very important to your character, both in roleplay and in terms of code capacity, so please think carefully when you set them in creation! Attributes default to Mediocre, with adjustments based on a race's natural tendencies. A race that is on average inferior at something will begin with it at Poor; a superior race at Fair. Every character receives 66 points to raise their attributes, with currently no additional points available after chargen. Costs can be checked by typing +sinfo (any attribute) while in-game, but a basic rubric is as follows: Terrible-Poor: 4 Poor-Med: 2 Med-Fair: 2 Fair-Good: 4 Good-Great: 6 Great-Superb: 8 Attributes cannot be raised higher than Superb; to lower them below your character's starting level requires a +str to the admins with justification of your reasons. Skills Skills represent the trained abilities, rather than natural potentials, of your character. As such, they default to Non-Existent (or Terrible-1) level. However, every skill is tied to an attribute to represent the effect of your natural potential on your ability. The two values are averaged together in a 3:2 ratio, resulting in your effective ability. For example: a character with Non-existent Athletics (valued at 0) and a Great Dexterity (valued at 6. This character's Athletics would be counted 3 times (0*3=3) and added to Dexterity counted twice (6*2=12), then averaged. 12+0=12/5=2.4, rounding down to 2, or Poor. So a non-existent skill tied to a great stat results in a default of poor. The command +level skill level/attribute level will tell you the effective level of any combination in game. Skills can be scaled by other things on your sheet, mainly GFQs. When a skill is scaled, a number will appear beside it on your character sheet; green for a positive scale, red for a negative one. What this means is an effective boost for that skill; a Good(+1) skill rolls like a Great skill, but only costs as much as a Good skill to improve to the next level, and is treated like a Good skill in terms of other skill limits. Otherspace has over 150 skills, divided into multiple categories. To limit any one person's mastery, there are several restrictions on what skills a character can learn. Only characters with the quirk of Combat Training can raise combat skills above Fair; the same goes for medical skills and Medical School, and technological skills and Technical School. Other gifts, such as psionic ones, may further limit the skills you can purchase. To see the limitations on any skill, one can type +sinfo (skill name) in creation. Several basic skills are recommended for everyone: Dodging allows one to avoid attacks, Observation allows one to notice hidden facets of their surroundings, and Mental Discipline allows one to resist psionic assaults. None of these are required, but they may help face some of the challenges of OS:TFS's world. Skill Limits This system is designed to prevent older players from becoming masters of everything. To further address that issue, there's a limit on how many high skills you may have. Currently, OS:TFS permits 1 skill at Legendary, 4 at Superb, and 8 at Great, with lower levels being unlimited. There is also no limit on how many skills you may have on your sheet. Gifts, Faults and Quirks Gifts, Faults and Quirks, or GFQs for short, are various positive, negative or simply unusual facets of a character that don't fit into traditional Fudge scaling. Gifts have positive coded effects on characters, faults have negative coded effects, and quirks are not coded, but simply represent some fact about the character. GFQs can cover anything from psionic powers to personality aspects to physical disabilities. A full list can be found on the game by typing +sinfo list gifts, +sinfo list quirks, and +sinfo list faults. These are received at chargen, and any requests for them should be included in the biography +str a new character sends to the admins to earn approval onto the grid. Future GFQs may be added to your +sheet through the course of play, as the admins see fit as logical consequences of your roleplay. Rolling All of these traits are summarized on your character's sheet, visible by typing +sheet after one has gone through creation. However, where their coded side actually comes into play is with the taskroll command. +taskroll (skill name) adds together your level in the skill with your level in the appropriate attribute in the fashion mentioned above, and then adds the result of 3dF, or three FUDGE dice. FUDGE dice are three-sided dice whose sides correspond to -1, 0 or 1; thus the number that's added to the average can be anywhere from -3 to +3. Due to the rules of probability, you're a lot more likely to roll a 0, a -1 or a +1 as relates to the effective level of your skill; however, you never know how your luck will go! Skills may be rolled at modifiers, to represent a situational advantage or disadvantage. The syntax for this command is +taskroll (skill name) at (modifier). Modifiers are typically +1 or -1; a modifier greater than +4/-4 is nearly unheard of. A skill may be rolled either in opposition against someone else's roll, such as Stealth and Observation, or against a fixed target of success. Fair is considered a solid success on this roll, and modifiers may be applied to make success easier on a task that should be fairly simple. Final Notes This skill system is currently in beta development. It's meant as a coded backbone to support scenes and give players the tools to arbitrate conflicts between themselves. Our focus here at JTS will always be roleplay, not rollplay. If you think something in this system could be amended to better support the cause of good roleplay, a +str on OS:TFS at jointhesaga.com port 1790 or a comment on our forums at www.jointhesaga.com/ovforums is always appreciated! See also NJ Skill Revamp Category: OtherSpace: The Farthest Star: Newbies